The Norwegian language, Norsk, is of one form, called Dano-Norwegian or Bokmal. It originated from a written form of Danish used since 1397 AD when Danish became the official language of Norway.

Old Norse, a version of which is spoken in Iceland, is understandable to Norsk speakers and vice-versa.

Bokmal, which is a fusion of Danish and old Norwegian, is spoken by most of the people of Norway, except those nobles living in towns who tend to prefer pure Danish. Using Danish is seen as a sign of good breeding and high status."

This is not exactly the case. Bokmål or bokmaal means book language and is a written language used by most Norwegians since it was made in about 1850, from dialects around Oslo. Everyone can write bokmål but few if any speak it, people speak their local dialect, today as they did around 1700. The reason for doing this was that was few if any rules on how to write words so most people just wrote the words as they spoke them and as literacy increased chaos and confusion did the same, something had to be done, and it was in 1850.

Some Norwegians went to university in Denmark, and learned Danish among other things. Most local Norwegian nobles would have loved to learn Danish but few had the time or inclination to devote the time and effort needed to learn a second language.

Instead they made a language called dannet dagligtale (formed daily language) that was a mix between Norwegian and Danish that was easier for Norwegians to learn and was used by nobles and officials.

There was always people that tried to speak Danish or the dannet dagligtale instead of their own local dialect but could not quite get it right. A few word, or more, slipped through here and there in the original dialect. This is called knoting and was and still is viewed with mockery by the formed language speakers and despised by the other dialect speakers that do not try to speak the ruling language.

That is cool. Italian had a similar journey, as we had several domination from other nations, wich brought words into local dialects.

For example, Sardinian and Sicilian languages had words in common with Catalan, while Bologna, were i live, had a long history of french domination, wich has remains on the local dialect. Apulia has words from norse, coming from norse domination in middle ages.Italian language came from a particular dialect of tuscany, and far regions has little or nothing in common with it.Correct language been coded in XVI century, but dialect forms merged with it creating various languages called “Volgare” from Vulga, wich means lower class people.